fidelity. The reasons which rendered the application ineffectual have
not been disclosed to us; but it may be questioned whether his powers of
reasoning could have been readily called forth on a stage so different
from any to which he had been hitherto accustomed; whether so late in
life he could have obtained the habit of attending to speakers,
sometimes dull, and sometimes perplexed; or whether that dictatorial
manner which easily conquered opposition in a small circle, might not
have been borne down by resentment or scorn in a large and mixed
assembly. Johnson would most willingly have made the experiment; and
when Reynolds repeated what Burke had said of him, that if he had come
early into parliament, he would certainly have been the greatest speaker
that ever was there, exclaimed, "I should like to try my hand now." That
we may proceed without interruption to the end of Johnson's political
career, it should here he told that he published (in 1774) a short
pamphlet in support of his friend, Mr. Thrale, who at that time was one
of the candidates in a contested election, and a zealous supporter of
the government. But his devotion to the powers that be, never led him to
so great lengths as in the following year (1775), when he wrote Taxation
no Tyranny: an Answer to the Resolutions and Address of the American
Congress. Now that we look back with impartiality and coolness to the
subject of dispute between the mother country and her colonies, there
are few, I believe, who do not acknowledge the Americans to have been
driven into resistance by claims, which, if they were not palpably
unlawful, were at least highly inexpedient and unjust. But Johnson was
no statist. With the nature of man taken individually and in the detail,
he was well acquainted; but of men as incorporated into society, of the
relations between the governors and the governed, and of all the
complicated interests of polity and of civil life, his knowledge was
very limited. Biography was his favourite study; history, his aversion.
Sooner than hear of the Punic war (says Murphy), he would be rude to the